SOCIAL CIRCLE, Ga. — In this deeply conservative town east of Atlanta, a political realization is unfolding. What began as a distant policy debate in Washington has arrived, quite literally, in residents’ backyards.
Back in December, local officials learned through media reports that the Department of Homeland Security had quietly purchased a 1.2 million-square-foot warehouse in their little town with the intention of turning it into a mega detention center with capacity for up to 10,000 people.
In a town of about 5,000, the scale is staggering.
Local leaders have scrambled to respond by organizing meetings, raising alarms about infrastructure strain and pressing federal officials for answers. Concerns include aging water lines, limited sewage capacity and the site’s proximity to the elementary school.
Months into those efforts, they are still waiting for DHS to answer their questions. They also say their Republican congressman and governor have been largely absent, unwilling to attend meetings, return calls or advocate on behalf of the very residents who overwhelmingly helped put them in office.
What lingers is a growing sense of abandonment among voters, many of whom are already questioning the people they have long supported as the 2026 midterms approach. They include many in Social Circle, where more than 70% of voters supported Donald Trump for president in 2016, 2020 and 2024.
When policy hits home
Eric Hutcheson, a 21-year Air Force veteran and father of seven, bought a property in Social Circle in 2018 after retiring from the military, convinced he was buying his dream home.
“We came here with the intent of being in our retirement home, the place where we can raise our children,” said Hutcheson, standing beside the 2-acre pond on his land, which is partially filled with sediment from the construction of the warehouse that DHS now owns.
“The worst part has just begun,” Hutcheson added. “Their property is right next to our property. Their tree line is our tree line. Their fence line is going to be what we see when we come out every day.”
Construction of the warehouse, Social Circle officials told MS NOW, was completed last year by developer PNK and approved with a giant retailer like Amazon, Walmart or Wayfair in mind. After the Trump administration launched a plan to dramatically expand detention capacity to accommodate mass deportations, PNK sold the property to DHS.
The project is now part of what DHS calls a “detention re-engineering initiative,” its plan to increase bed capacity at facilities owned by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to 92,600 by the end of September. The initiative establishes eight large-scale detention centers and 16 processing sites, including two in Georgia. As of April 4, there were roughly 68,000 people in ICE detention. A year ago, that number was around 35,000.
While border security and strong immigration policies have long been central to Trump’s campaigns, 2024 brought a more radical message: calls for the deportation of millions of immigrants. At rallies and during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee that year, it was common to see supporters waving signs demanding “Mass Deportation Now!” Now it’s happening, and those detained ahead of deportation have to be held somewhere.
That is what’s unfolding in Social Circle and other communities, and it was not the part of Trump’s deportation push that the administration advertised.
“No president, Republican or Democrat, has ever tried to arrest as many people, because it would have required this type of extreme new infrastructure being built in communities like Social Circle,” said Andrea Flores, founder of Securing America’s Promise and a former DHS official and White House adviser during the Obama administration. “This was an inevitable consequence of the president deciding to pursue mass deportations. Detention is part of the removal process.”
That it’s happening in communities that have backed the president isn’t lost on those who live there.
“I support the mission of ICE to an extent,” Hutcheson said, “but that doesn’t mean that they need to put their detention facility in a residential area. We don’t feel like our kids are safe on our property. We don’t feel like other people’s kids are safe in the elementary school that’s literally right across the road.”
Unanswered calls
Hutcheson’s frustration extends beyond the project itself to what he sees as a lack of response from elected officials, particularly Republican Rep. Mike Collins, who represents Hutcheson’s district and whom he supported.
“I know Mike Collins is busy putting in a bid for a senatorial race, but when you see signs that say ‘Veteran in need? Call me’ and you call and they don’t have any response, then you feel betrayed,” Hutcheson said.
“I served for 21 years. I have fought to provide safety and security for my family from threats overseas. And now we have a threat next door and we feel like we’re alone in this battle.”
Back in February, Collins raised concerns about the facility’s impact on the community. Residents in Social Circle told MS NOW he has since been largely absent and has done little to advocate for the town despite being a close ally of the president.
“Republican representatives are willing to sacrifice this place for the bigger red state,” resident Josh Thompson said during a town meeting in March at which residents railed against the DHS project. “They’re underestimating some of these Republican voters. There’s going to be a price to pay in a few months.”
Thompson, who said he moved to Social Circle in part, ironically, to escape the noise of Atlanta politics, and others pointed to examples in other states where Republican officials have successfully halted similar projects by engaging directly with federal authorities and applying pressure on the Trump administration. In New Hampshire, for example, Gov. Kelly Ayotte announced that after direct talks with DHS, the agency halted plans for a 500-bed facility in the small town of Merrimack.
When MS NOW asked Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp why he had not been more actively involved in opposing the Social Circle project, his office punted: “This is a federal project the state doesn’t have a role in.”
Kemp is not running for re-election, but other Republicans might not be exempt from potential backlash.
In a recent race to fill former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat in the state’s northwest corner, the Democratic candidate improved on previous margins by 25 points, narrowing what had once been a heavily skewed margin. Even though Republicans ultimately held the seat, the scale of the shift signaled growing volatility in deeply conservative areas.
The political context
The fight in Social Circle is unfolding against a high-stakes political backdrop.
On May 19, Georgia will hold its 2026 primary elections. If Collins secures the Republican nomination, he will face Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in a contest that could determine control of the Senate.
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For Republicans, winning Ossoff’s seat is a top priority after Ossoff and Raphael Warnock flipped both of Georgia’s Senate seats in 2021. But even among longtime Republican voters, doubts are emerging.
“Mike Collins, if you want our vote ever again, you need to help us and come down here and do something,” said LeAnne Long, a Newton County commissioner and Republican organizer opposing the project. “You need to go to President Trump. You have to help us.”
The Georgia primary race has turned chaotic with a crowded lineup of Republican candidates and internal fighting. There’s no clear favorite yet, and no Trump endorsement. As a result, Long says, Collins and other Republicans are keeping their distance from the Social Circle controversy. Anything, she says, to stay in Trump’s good graces.
“I don’t think they want to get involved with it because of their elections and Trump, and that is really sad,” Long added. “We’ve had some of our Democratic leaders come out and do more than our Republican leaders have done.”
Collins ignored MS NOW’s multiple interview requests. When MS NOW caught him outside his office on Capitol Hill, he blamed Democrats for immigration policies he said have harmed communities and cited the case of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley, who was killed in 2024 by an undocumented migrant.
“Laken Riley was murdered in my district,” Collins said. “So you want to know some people that actually feel the pain of what these illegal criminal aliens have done? They understand that.”
But to some voters back home, that is exactly the point.
As one Social Circle resident asked at that March meeting: “If President Trump is to be believed, if these people are as bad as they’ve been portrayed to be, why are they not building a supermax prison somewhere out in the middle of nowhere instead of right in a residential area?”
(More than 70% of current ICE detainees have no criminal convictions, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.)
An unexpected ally
Social Circle leaders say Ossoff was the first elected official to get in touch with them after learning about the DHS plans, and has since written to the agency backing the town’s opposition. He’s also supporting a bill that would require local approval before the federal government can open ICE detention facilities.
Warnock has gone even further — to Social Circle itself, a place where he wouldn’t normally expect much support.
On March 2, Warnock toured the warehouse, the water and sewage plants and the school, and met with parents, teachers and other concerned residents. He also filed amendments trying to block funding for the construction of the facility, but with a $38.3 billion budget already allotted to DHS for the initiative, that seems unlikely.
“Even the folks who voted for Donald Trump did not vote for this,” Warnock told MS NOW. “I don’t believe that the people of Social Circle, Georgia, thought that they were voting to triple the size of their town by bringing a 10,000-bed mega detention center to their little neck of the woods.”
Three days after Warnock’s visit, Kristi Noem was fired as DHS secretary. Trump picked Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin to lead the agency, and during his confirmation hearing he distanced himself from the department’s practice under Noem of having minimal interaction with locals.
“It’s important that we’re talking to the communities,” Mullin said. “We can work with the cities, we can work with municipalities, but we should always communicate with them.”
DHS has since paused new warehouse purchases and is reviewing existing projects. What that means for Social Circle and the other locations isn’t clear, but Warnock isn’t holding his breath.
“I’m not focused so much on a person. I’m focused on the policy,” Warnock said. “And what we’ve seen from this administration is that Donald Trump makes his own policy.”
Also unclear is how much what’s happening in Social Circle is an indicator of the discontent among Trump voters more broadly.
“The math has already been done,” John Miller, a community organizer, told MS NOW. “They are willing to sacrifice their constituents here in Social Circle because they feel like it’s more important to be with the ICE agenda than it is to physically help Social Circle on the ground.”
This story is part of Cities Under Siege, an MS NOW effort to document how the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics are impacting communities across America.
Antonia Hylton is co-anchor of "The Weekend: Primetime" and an award-winning correspondent for MS NOW.
Kay Guerrero
Kay Guerrero is a senior producer of newsgathering for MS NOW.
Grace Cardinal is an anchor production assistant for MS NOW based in New York.